I sometimes think about how I can stay in the practice.  I know that people are practitioners for decades (I have been for almost two decades) so it isn’t the time I’m wondering about.  But how can I stay tender-hearted and fresh?  How can I continue to want to answer the phone?  Or how can I stay alert?  How can my faith stay unfeigned and honest, instead of habitual?  I think that healing is the only thing that does this.  

This is true of healings in the practice, but I’m mostly thinking about my own healings.  There’s nothing like the experience of Truth lifting me out of a lie or mesmerism into clear air and freedom, for learning about God’s power.  

Here’s a healing like that.  Just before Association last year – in fact the Thursday night before Saturday – I was in distress, pain, bleeding internally, and other symptoms. This had been going on for about a week but at that point it seemed particularly aggressive.  I asked for some help from a fellow Association member, and my husband read Science and Health to me.  I had been praying leading up to Association to be alert so that I wouldn’t be faked out if something tried to prevent me (or anyone) from being at Association.  This was a little louder lie than I had imagined, but I could still see that it was a lie.  I felt that the suffering was mesmeric, not actual.  But I still had to deal with the mesmerism.  I don’t remember any quotes from the time, but the passages about the Comforter that are in our references pretty much describe the experience.  The spirit of Truth came to me.  Sometime that night the symptoms stopped.  I was able to do the normal preparations for Association on Friday and have the normal alertness during the Address and reading it on Sunday at the Hilton.  All was completely settled a couple of days later.  Experiencing Truth’s power like this helps me greatly when hearing vivid details from a patient in a call, or having several cases at a time.  Mrs. Eddy says that “Sickness is the schoolmaster, leading you to Christ;” (Rud 10)  I don’t see this as justifying pain or sickness.  Instead I really value what I learn from being led to Christ in this way.